Torchwood Children
by Xrai
Summary: They are all Torchwood children and they all suffer in their own ways.


**Torchwood Children**

_**Monday's child is fair of face  
**_It's an art, making people want you. The smile, the slow seduction, the quick, hard fuck against the wall, it's all practice makes perfect.

And Jack is meant for this. It's so easy for him; they come like moths to a flame, for his blue eyes, his body, to hear him whisper dirty nothings in their ears. Jack can give them what no one else can.

He's perfection itself. A smile, a wink. A promise of the best sex ever. The suckers, they fall for it each time.

Jack breaks hearts.

Better theirs than his.

_**Tuesday's child is full of grace  
**_Her hands go clickkety-clack-clack. Tap-tap, those fingers long and elegant rain down on the wood. Unconscious reflexes. In her mind she's still in front of her computer, calculating Rift readings in her head, typing as fast as she thinks.

Tap-taps her way through her drink, deep in thought. Hand on her cheek. Doesn't notice the men watching her (or the woman).

Mary knows her. Tosh is quiet, polite, unassuming, but in her head, she screams, ponders, marvels, loves, hates. But locks it all away so neat and tidy. So fascinating, this lock, waiting to be picked. That pretty, pretty lock in her pretty, pretty head.

Just prey. But even prey can be beautiful.  
It will be a pity to kill her.

_**Wednesday's child is full of woe  
**_His father's hand is a warm presence on his shoulder, comforting during the scary parts of the movie which drag chills down his spine–

the same hand that smacks between his shoulder blades and then he's falling, falling…

Rhi sits on his bed, his hands in hers and promises to always be there for him.  
Then Johnny comes along and she's gone too.

Lisa is gleaming and beautiful in her ecstasy; she leans over, kisses him and he is filled with a warmth more than lust.  
Her next gleaming touch is cold, so cold it freezes his heart.

Loving Jack is like playing with fire. Jack is beautiful in the flow of his passions; he flickers, then flares, and then Ianto is lost in his raging inferno. He warms, burns, but like a flame Jack cannot be cupped in his hands and kept only for himself; hiding his warmth and light from others.  
Jack's flame will never go out; it melts his frozen heart, but may one day burn it to ashes.

_**Thursday's child has far to go  
**_Owen lusts and doesn't love. He doesn't want to.

No names, forgettable faces. Gone the next day. No goodbyes, no regrets. The sex is always good though.

But they are just shadows of her, a blur of breasts, arms and legs and he if drowns himself in them, maybe he can forget about Katie.

_**Friday's child is loving and giving  
**_Gwen dreams. And wakes up at night in cold sweat, clutching at her blankets, at Rhys.

They haunt her, those faces, the twisted, pained faces of the dead. The dead she could not save. There's the little girl and her brother, killed by Weevils. Their half-eaten faces stare at her in remonstration.

The rift victim. The terrified alien mother who had rather taken her own life than live in this foreign world alone.

_Why, why, why–  
__Why didn't you save us?_

_I tried_, she says each time, _I tried_. _I'm so sorry_.

Owen autopsies and makes jokes. Toshiko peers at screens. Ianto cleans. Jack looms and gives orders.

She wonders what they dream about at night.

_**Saturday's child works hard for a living  
**_There is always her father.

Always disappointed, sometimes sad, never proud, even when his arms are around her and he kisses her hair and tells her he loves her.

Never good enough, not she, the not-son he never wanted.

So Suzie leaves and her father is no longer there just work Torchwood work work Owen work Aliens work work. She loves it. It's all she has, all she wants. And it's perfect.

It's so easy. The knife cuts through them like butter.

This is her life. Her hand, her gun, her choice. She seizes control with an iron fist and doesn't let go.

_**But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day  
**__**Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.  
**_This is Torchwood.

Such children don't belong here.


End file.
